The
Gaspee Days Committee at www.gaspee.COM
is a civic-minded nonprofit organization that operates many community
events
in and around Pawtuxet Village, including the famous Gaspee Days Parade
each June. These events are all designed to commemorate the 1772 burning of
the hated British revenue schooner, HMS Gaspee, by Rhode Island
patriots as America's 'First Blow for Freedom' TM.
Our
historical research center, the Gaspee Virtual Archives at www.gaspee.ORG
, has presented these research notes as an attempt to gather further
information
on one who has been suspected of being associated with the the burning
of the Gaspee. Please e-mail your comments or further questions
to webmaster@gaspee.org.

Evidence to support Benoni Simmons'
participation in the raid on the Gaspee

In April 2011 we received a delightfully surprising e-mail from Chuck
Simmons of Idaho, who had extensively researched his family genealogy.
Simmons' research made our task much easier

Ladies/Gentlemen:
To your list of participants in the burning of the HMS Gaspee it would appear you can add
the name of Benoni Simmons.

From Nancy Simmons' (the widow of Benoni) application for a widow's
pension [Rev. War Pension File W.13,899-Benoni Simmons] < available
online at http://www.Footnote.com
>:

Benoni's widow, Nancy Simmons
stated that:
...... Her said
husband, the said Benoni, while a youth, was first an apprentice to the
ship building business in the town of Providence in this state, and
there resided until some time in the year 1774. In this year I
believe the Enemy's armed vessel 'Gaspee' was burnt in Providence
River, by a body of men in disguise, from Providence and some
neighboring towns -- And I have heard my sd husband often state that he
was one of them that went with the party from Providence -- And that
he,
on that occasion, took his neck handkerchief to bind around the leg of
a
man who was slightly wounded -- I have many times heard him claim
'The burning of the Gaspee' as being the first Act of the Colonies in
opposition to Arbitrary power wherein blood was shed at the opening of
the war. Soon after this event he went to reside in Glastonbury,
Connecticut ...

Note that Federal pension applications were serious
matters, and all information contained in them had to be sworn to in
front of two or more. witnesses. Even Justices of the Peace were
required to have their signatures authenticated by City Clerks.
The inclusion of the narrative of Benoni Simmons' participation in the
attack on the Gaspee in 1772 is truly a gem, for it could not be used
to calculate service time for pension purposes. Rather, it was
most likely included as a statement of pride. In 1826 four other
surviving members of that attack were fȇted at parades during the
50th anniversary celebrations of American Independence. This
led other surviving Gaspee burners to include notice of their
own participation in the attack, in documents such as Revolutionary War
service pension applications.

Benoni Simmons was of 17 years old at the time of the attack in 1772
making him
one of the youngest known Gaspee raiders, but his youthful age was
common to many of the 17-21 year olds that went along on the
attack. The fact stated here that men in the attack dressed
themselves as Indians in disguise lends new credence to that concept
which has been often disputed, for several Gaspee raiders claimed that
they were not disguised. While the captain of the Gaspee, Lt. Dudingston was
seriously wounded in the arm and groin, he was attended to by others,
including student doctor John Mawney. Several other people were said to
have been slightly wounded in the attack and perhaps such a man was the
one attended to by Simmons.

Biographical
notes:

At the
present time we know little about the upbringing of Benoni
Simmons. He grew up in, what was then, the bucolic community of
Little Compton, RI, known to have been a center for agricultural
plantations, often with the help of slaves. While situated on the
ocean coast, the community was not known for maritime pursuits.

In either event, young Benoni was sent off by the age of 17 to become
apprenticed into the ship-building trade. We do know that several
such shipyards flourished in those times, including one operated in
Providence's Fox Point neighborhood by the prominent merchant Brown
family, of which John Brown was the chief
instigator for the attack on the Gaspee
in 1772. Elkanah Watson was
also known to have been an apprentice to John Brown, though not known
to be specifically trained in ship-building. It might be surmised
from the rather large contingent of teenagers that were involved in the
attack on the Gaspee, that
many of these young men may have been involved because they had been
likewise apprenticed under the Brown family businesses. Why Benoni
Simmons subsequently moved to Glastonbury
is subject to
conjecture, but it is known that that area had developed a considerable
shipbuilding trade along the Connecticut River during the 18th
Century. It can be surmised that Benoni Simmons left Providence
upon
the completion of his apprenticeship to continue his trade there.

In 1838 Benoni Simmons' widow, Nancy,
applied for a Federal
pension
as granted to the surviving widows of men that had served honorably in
the
Continental Army or Navy. It is from this
document, paraphrased below, and several other sources that we cull the
following record of Benoni
Simmons' remarkable
service to the American cause in the Revolution::

After
recovering from his wound at the "General
Hospital at Fort George", it
appears he went to Springfield
where he "was in the laboratory for
a
short time"5He
then spent a brief period in the Corps
of Invalids in
Philadelphia. Even though he was awarded a pension awarded
17August1777 for his injuries, he is next found aboard an unnamed
vessel or galley in
the
Delaware River "at the time of the Battle at Red
Bank" where he was "in
full view of the contending parties" 6.

From 27Nov1777 through 27Oct1778 he served as a sergeant in Capt.
Bryant's Company of Col. Mason's Regiment, and then served in Capt.
Benjamin Frothingham's Company of Col. John Crane's
Artillery Regiment.at Springfield, during 18Nov1778; where he had
signed up for a 3 years enlistment. He was reported discharged
Sept. 30, 1778 7
.

In March 1779 he
enlisted as a Sergeant in an artillery
company
of Captain Howe, Col. Elliot's Rhode Island Regiment of Artillery
stationed in the
Little Compton area, from which unit he was discharged in March 1780.
The land war was over with the American victory at Yorktown in October
1781, but further fighting still occurred at sea.. Simmons
apprarently still itched for action against the British, and
transferred over to the Navy on
31December1781. He served on board USS Alliance
under Capt. Barry 8 and "... went to
France, and carried home ....
the Marquis de Layfayette" and purchased from a servant of
the Marquis a coat which had been the Marquis' ".9
Benoni Simmonds was discharged from the active Navy rolls on
17March1786, having
served 11 years in the active military, and became a resident of Rhode
Island.. He is still found on the Roll of United States Navy pensioners
belonging to
Massachusetts through 31December1787.10

2.Before Simmons joined
this
regiment, these were the troops that had
previously transported captured British artillery pieces from Fort
Ticonderoga on sleds through horrible winter
conditions all the way to the Heights of
Dorchester overlooking the then
British occupied City of Boston, thus prompting the enemy to hastily
withdraw from the City via their ships in March 1776.

3.This
expeditionary force
into Canada was not one that had been assigned to Col. Knox's Regiment
but rather to that of Capt. Ebenezer Stevens, transferred under the
overall command of General Benedict Arnold.. A
galley is a rowed warship typically used as a cannon platform or as a
fire-starting catapult base. For an account of the horrible
conditions encountered by American soldiers at Isle au Noix see: The
American Northern Theater Army in 1776: The Ruin and Reconstruction
of the Continental Forceby Douglas R. Cubbison, 2010, p120. The
entire Chapter Six which applies is fortuitously presented on-line as a
free preview.

4.Simmons
lost his entire left arm up to
the
shoulder-possibly due to direct combat, or possibly due to surgical
amputation to treat or prevent
gangrene from developing in the wound

5.It
might be postulated that
the reference to the "laboratory" at Springfield to mean
Springfield Armory which was established in 1777. This would
certainly seem a fitting place to assign an invalid with extensive
gunnery experience.

6.
The
Battle of Red Bank occurred on October 27, 1777 at Fort Mercer,
just south of Philadelphia.

7 of the Revolutionary
War, 14:228

.8 thus after
September 1780.

9. Alliance transported
Lafayette back to France arriving there on January 17,
1782. He is not, however, listed among the prize crew of the Alliance that fought the final
battle of the Revolution, that being her engagement with HMS Sybil on March 10, 1783 (5 weeks
after the Treaty of Paris was signed) It may be postulated that
perhaps instead Simmonds accompanied, as part of an
honor guard, Lafayette to his home in France.

10Massachusetts
Soldiers &
Sailors, 15:335.

In addition to helping start the Revolution by participating in the
attack on the Gaspee in 1772,
Benoni Simmons served between 1775 through 1786, encompassing the
entire
Revolutionary War and beyond, and rose through the ranks of "Sergeant
of
Artillery" and "Master Gunner". It is obvious that Benoni
Simmons exemplifies the very best of patriotic ideals and valor in his
continuous service during the American War of Revolution. Serving
in the artillery commands of both the Continental Army and Navy he was
the prototypical gunnery sergeant, or gunney, of what would later
become the US Marine Corps. He was undoubtedly fearless and fearsome at
the same time, while
exemplifying the very best of patriotic
ideals and valor in his continuous service during the American War of
Revolution.

With the loss of his left arm he could no longer
ply the shipbuilding
trade, and cannoneer was not a civilian job option when the standing
Continental Army and Navy were dissolved at the end of the
Revolution. We presume Benoni Simmons returned to his home town
of
Little Compton to once again take up farming, and where he pops up
periodically in historical records.

He was married to Nancy Bailey in 1784, the year after the treaty ended
the Revolutionary War. He is listed in the 1790
Census of Newport County as 1-1-2-0-0, that is, 1 adult male, one
male less than 16 years, 2 females, 0 others, and 0 slaves. This
perfectly matches the expected count at the time of Benoni, his wife,
Nancy, and their two surviving children at the time, Cornelius and
Lydia (see genealogy below). He did not have any boarders or
slaves. The 1800 Federal census from Little Compton also matches
our expectations of Benoni, his wife, and their five surviving children
born by that time. Many of the other families that are contiguous in
the census are assumed to be closeby neighbors, and as common, we see
many familiar surnames of Simmons, Grinells, and Baileys. This
attests to a family farming cooperative set-up. By 1820 the Federal
Census tells us more specifically that at least 2 of the males in the
Benoni Simmons' household were engaged in agriculture, probably Benoni
and his son, Valentine. Besides Benoni and Nancy, and their two
teenagers Valentine and Comfort assumably living with them, they also
had one child less than 10 years old in the household, which may
have been a grandchild. In 1819 Benoni Simmons was appointed a
town officer of Little Compton, holding the title of Auctioneer.
We can attest that he was literate since he signed some of his own
documents that were included in his widow's application for a
pension. He also became a man of some means, for he was able to
commission a painting
of his son when John was a young child.

Federal pension application records related to Revolutionary War
wounded veterans held in the City of Washington were largely destroyed
when the
British sacked and burned the town in 1814. While we cannot see
the all the details of his pension application, his name does appear on
a rare
list, from 1813 that survived, of all recipients of Federal pensions at
http://www.archive.org/details/pensionletter00unitrich
. We know that he filed for and received a State invalid pension
on 04
March 1789 whereby he was granted a disability income of $60 per year,
which was increased to $96 per year on 24 April 1816.

His wife, Nancy's, application for a widows pension in 1838 gives us
more detail in her narrative [Rev War Pension File: W13,899-Benoni
Simmons] and is available online at Footnote.com.
She had to wait until that time before the US Congress finally got
around to extending these benefits to the very few such women who were
left. Included in the widow's pension
papers are some items original to Benoni himself, such as a letter from
January 1777 written by Ebenezer Stevens, his artillery company
commander, attesting to his capability to continue work supporting the
Army in a laboratory or other such occupation despite his war related
wounds.

The real crime is that when Benoni 's original pension was transferred
from Massachusetts to Rhode Island someone at the RI Board of Pensions
for Invalid Servicemen screwed up in recording him on the RI rolls and
the $6.50 per month pension he had been receiving was reduced to $5.00
per month. An ironic aspect of this sad case is that
Benoni Simmons'
pension transfer from Massachusetts to Rhode Island was entrusted to Paul Allen, Esq., a Commissioner of Invalid
Pensions, and a man who had been along with Simmons on the Gaspee attack back in
1772. Another part of the difficulty was that Benoni Simmons' pay
grade, as warranted by a non-commissioned officer (Sergeant, and Master
Gunner), was not
always well recorded as such in the muster lists of either the army or
naval forces in which he served. According to his widow, Nancy,
Benoni, "... on being informed of the error, demonstrated against it,
but being then as he ever since has been poor and infirm was compelled
to take the ($5) per month, or suffer for the want thereof ... until
the year 1816 when, by the Act of Congress his Pension was increased to
($8) per month ... " Whether he was just satisfied with the $8
pension he was receiving ... or whether his previous experience
discussed above (coupled with Nancy's statement that his understanding
was that he wasn't entitled to a "regular" pension), caused him to not
want to risk losing the pension he was already receiving, probably
accounts for the fact that he didn't apply for a "regular" pension
under the 1818/1820 Pension Acts. In either event, by 1848 and at the
advanced age of 82 years, Nancy Simmons was receiving her widows'
pension of $120 per year.

Genealogical
Notes:

Perhaps because his family extends from the Mayflower, the Internet is
absolutely choked with genealogical information that includes Benoni
Simmons, and only a brief summary will be included here.

Benoni Simmons was born 4 August 1755, the son of John
Simmons (29 Jan 1727- ) and Lydia Grinnell (7 Dec 1726 - )
of Little
Compton, RI.

He married his wife Nancy
Bailey on 19Sep1784 in Little Compton. Nancy was born 14FEB1767 in
Little Compton, the daughter of Cornelius and Mary (White) Bailey.

Benoni Simmons died
15 June 1835 in Little Compton, aged 79 years. Nancy Simmons died
20 Oct 1855 at age 88 Benoni Simmons,
his wife, and two of
their sons are buried in the first
four graves at the west end of the sixth row in the Old Commons
Cemetery in Little Compton (LC012). According to NEHGR 115:172 Benoni
Simmons' grave is noted to have a marker from the Sons of the American
Revolution. Despite this accuracy above, his name is listed in
the Rhode Island
Historical Cemetery Database Project as "M. Benoni Simmons".
Benoni & Nancy had eight children (all were born in Little Compton)
as follows:

Benoni Simmons' son, John
Simmons, moved to Boston as a young man and made a fortune in the
ready-made clothing business. He hired immigrant Irish and German girls
and prodded them that they would never get ahead unless they were
educated. He
left money to found Simmons College
in Boston, but much of his holdings were destroyed in the Great Fire of
Boston in 1872, and founding of the college was delayed until
1899.. Henry
S.
Rowe, a "Trustee under the will of Mr. Simmons", did a lot of research
on the family and published The
Ancestry of John Simmons in 1933.

Of other note, Benoni's son Valentine Simmons, moved to Pennsylvania
and became a noted industrialist. He had a son in 1828 he named Benoni
Simmons. This younger Benoni was known to have been on the crew
of
a whaling vessel out of New Bedford, MA, and he was lost at sea at the
age
of 22.

The Gaspee Days Committee
proudly recognizes Benoni Simmons both as
a Gaspee
raider and as a grievously wounded combat leader and veteran of the
Revolution. He is truly an American hero.